Yahoo! Mail for Windows 8 pulled from the store out of the blue (confirmed)

Yahoo! had a decently designed Modern UI app for Windows 8/8.1, but it has seemingly been pulled for no reason.

If you ‘Bing’ Yahoo Mail for Windows, you will find this link, which currently redirects to ‘Sorry, this app is no longer available.’ If you look at the cached page of the same link (here), you will see that it used to be Yahoo! Mail, published by Yahoo! Inc. Searching for Yahoo! Mail within the Windows Store also comes up with nothing.

Yahoo has been heavily concentrated on mobile with their consumer software lately, so this could simply be a shift of focus. However, they do have an iPad app, and so it is unfortunate they no longer support a Windows version. Coupled with the fact that Yahoo Mail (nor any other Yahoo app) doesn’t have a native app for Windows Phone is an indication that this is not a temporary hiccup. It seems that the search agreement between the two companies did not lead to a wider collaboration.

Sadly, this seems to be the newest chapter in the ‘chicken and egg’ problem for the Windows ecosystem, and the most likely reason for the takedown is simply that not enough users used the app for continued effort.

Yahoo has responded to our inquiry with the following response: “At Yahoo, we’re focused on making the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining. This means that we’re constantly reviewing and iterating on our products and experiences. At times, we have to make tough decisions. We can confirm that we recently ended support for the Yahoo Mail app for Windows 8 to better focus on our core offerings.”